Promoting your own game can be a daunting task, especially in a market where over 3 billion people identify as gamers. While bringing your game ideas to life is exciting, navigating the challenges of promoting your own game can be frustrating for developers, even those skilled in coding and animation.

Beyond mastering coding and animation, successfully promoting your game requires dedication and strategic marketing to ensure it gains the popularity it deserves. Many game developers find this aspect particularly challenging, but it doesn't have to be that way. In this article, we will navigate the complexities of promoting your own game and provide actionable strategies to simplify the process.

1st Challenge: The Gaming Market is Very Crowded

Video game marketing is at an all-time high when it comes to competition. In 2022, the Gaming Industry surpassed Movies and Sports in revenue. As this may sound great, we must consider who shares the biggest part of this cake. We’ll let you guess.

This growth meant something when the big tech companies, such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix, started to get involved more closely with game development and promotions. With AAA studios investing in huge exposure and tons of ads in those places, the space left for indie games is tight and difficult to reach.

At the same time, technology is making your job easier than before and also helping other developers. Steam releases can prove me right, with over 12K games released only in 2022. It certainly adds another difficulty when gaining traction among all those other titles. However, we see this as an opportunity for game developers to develop more creative games, defy the status quo, and dare to go above and beyond.

2nd Challenge: Paid User Acquisition Solutions are complex and expensive!

Yep, if we want to do it right, we must spend a few grand here and there. It takes as much dedication as making the game itself because now you’re about to market it. Not everything is easy initially, and we can get annoyed and disappointed with the results. We bet you have already ventured yourself with paid ads or tried out an influencer to promote your game, but nothing has brought you the expected results.

You have to consider that paid platforms are complex, constantly changing (tell me about it!), and often have an interface that is hard to read, mainly for people who are not there every day.

Besides that, we can say that paid ads are not an exact science! A successful campaign is full of tests with big achievements but even bigger errors, what we marketers kindly call “A/B testing.” But as with everything in life, it costs money because to make things perform well and optimize spending, we’re constantly testing headlines, visual assets, CTA’s, etc. The list is quite long! To learn more, read our article on Key Insights to Drive User Acquisition in 2024.

3rd Challenge: Defining the right audience for your game

We're unsure if you’re familiar with the concept of niche and how it applies to your reality. The Webster's Dictionary defines niche “as a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted.” In marketing, we put everything in boxes to classify behaviour, taste, and similarities, which help us to identify which audience is more suitable for a determined product, service, and, in your case, a game.

So, how do you find the right audience for your niche game? Not that, at this point, you should know exactly about what your game is. One would think that going with extremely precise targeting would yield awesome results, but the reality could be quite the opposite.

The other way around is also possible! A game that you want to reach out to everyone universally may not work in your best interest. Advertising needs some fine-tuning, and being too wide open may just be burning your budget without translating that into sales.

Navigating the challenges of promoting your own game can be daunting, especially without a universal solution or a big budget for fancy ad platforms. So, what can you do to make it work?

At GameRebellion, you're in the right place. We specialize in analyzing your game and highlighting its selling points to connect with the right audience. While we may not create games, we excel at uncovering hidden gems in your marketing strategies and helping you achieve your goals. Interested? Check out our Marketing Services, and let's talk!

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